30 réponses à ce sujet

[The Night Haunter]

I dunno if his has been adressed, but in every book Mr. Gaider is very explicit in not mentioning the sides the warden/hawke took or their choices. The only time this changed was when Leliana was retconned to be alive.

But now the Silent Grove completely retcon's you Origins game. Alistair is suddenly king, even if he wasn't when you played. Isabela is travelling with Varric, which means Hawke didn't hand her over to the Qunari (if he did then she and Varric wouldn't be on speaking terms) and she didn't leave Hawke after she got the relic (again she probably wouldn't be with Varric if she ran away from him and Hawke earlier).

How is this handled? Does the SIlent Grove only take place in a DA universe where Alistair was King and Isabel stayed? Is Bioware erasing some of our choices?

I know Mr. Laidlaw said something about making a clean start with DA3 in terms of importing saves because of all the problems Origins and DA2 had with handling decision imports. (He didnt say your choices would be cancelled, he didnt rule out something like the ME2 comic book to redo choices in a manner that makes them usable in DA3). But since the Leliana retcon it seems Bioware is realizing they actually wanted you to make certain choices and are going to pretend you made them, even if you didnt.

Is the Dark Ritual always going to be performed now, since the Old God Baby seems like a major story arc to me and something that would be hard to fix if you declined Morrigans offer? Is Alistair (the blood of Maric and Calenhad) always the king now?

Edit: Now also there is Sten who appears as the Arishok in the upcoming comics, regardless if the old arishok died or even if you left sten in Lothering.

What is happening to our choices.

Modifié par ghostmessiah202, 18 août 2012 - 09:53 .

[TobiTobsen]

Gaider needs a canon he can base his story on. He cannot write 20 stories just to cover every possible choice players could make. That's what it is. His book canon. Nothing else.

Your story is still like you wanted it to be. If your Alistair is a useless drunkard, he will be one in DA3. If there is no OGB in your story, then there won't be one in DA3 for you and so forth.

Modifié par TobiTobsen, 18 août 2012 - 10:04 .

[DKJaigen]

ghostmessiah202 wrote...

I dunno if his has been adressed, but in every book Mr. Gaider is very explicit in not mentioning the sides the warden/hawke took or their choices. The only time this changed was when Leliana was retconned to be alive.

But now the Silent Grove completely retcon's you Origins game. Alistair is suddenly king, even if he wasn't when you played. Isabela is travelling with Varric, which means Hawke didn't hand her over to the Qunari (if he did then she and Varric wouldn't be on speaking terms) and she didn't leave Hawke after she got the relic (again she probably wouldn't be with Varric if she ran away from him and Hawke earlier).

How is this handled? Does the SIlent Grove only take place in a DA universe where Alistair was King and Isabel stayed? Is Bioware erasing some of our choices?

I know Mr. Laidlaw said something about making a clean start with DA3 in terms of importing saves because of all the problems Origins and DA2 had with handling decision imports. (He didnt say your choices would be cancelled, he didnt rule out something like the ME2 comic book to redo choices in a manner that makes them usable in DA3). But since the Leliana retcon it seems Bioware is realizing they actually wanted you to make certain choices and are going to pretend you made them, even if you didnt.

Is the Dark Ritual always going to be performed now, since the Old God Baby seems like a major story arc to me and something that would be hard to fix if you declined Morrigans offer? Is Alistair (the blood of Maric and Calenhad) always the king now?

Edit: Now also there is Sten who appears as the Arishok in the upcoming comics, regardless if the old arishok died or even if you left sten in Lothering.

What is happening to our choices.

You seem to confuse retcon with cannon. Retcon means lore is alterd. For example: grey wardens do not use a ritual in the future installments while it was clear that they did so in the past series. Cannon means that the hero of the first series has 4 choices to end the game. but future installments always assume that the hero chooses option 2.

And in my opinion BW made a bad mistake by giving the players to many choices which causes many players to throw colossal ****fits ,which you are doing now. Even the witcher  who is loudly acclaimed for it so called choices nut in the end you change very little. The story should never be compromised for the players so called choices.  So i really dont have a problem with all of this.

[The Night Haunter]

Maybe, but his books (including Asunder a recent one) keep away from mentioning choices by the player, they handle it by general references, keeping the gender of the player as 'they' (neutral in other words) and only refering to choices as generalities. 'look at the problem hawke caused' tells us hawke did something, but it doesnt define what he did (leaves it open for us to decide)

But these comics leave little for us to decide (maybe whether alistair is married to a warden, anora, or no-one) .

When you combine this with Mr. Laidlaw saying they wanted an 'error-proof' way of importing choices kind of makes me think they want to restart with a Canon DA3 and then let our choices matter from that point forward.


I hope you are right Tobi, but I am a bit worried.

[The Night Haunter]

DKJaigen wrote...

You seem to confuse retcon with cannon. Retcon means lore is alterd. For example: grey wardens do not use a ritual in the future installments while it was clear that they did so in the past series. Cannon means that the hero of the first series has 4 choices to end the game. but future installments always assume that the hero chooses option 2.

And in my opinion BW made a bad mistake by giving the players to many choices which causes many players to throw colossal ****fits ,which you are doing now. Even the witcher  who is loudly acclaimed for it so called choices nut in the end you change very little. The story should never be compromised for the players so called choices.  So i really dont have a problem with all of this.

Well it is retcon in the sense that in our universe what we did was canon, but in future versions of our universe what was canon changed.

I agree that bioware may have made a mistake with the number of choices in Origins. Especially the Old God Baby, that seems to be a huge story and something they cant just say 'well Morrigan got her old god baby with a different warden' because she needed to be near the Archdemon when it was slain to have the soul pass to her baby. If they make the ritual canon I wouldnt be too unhappy with that, mostly cause i almost always took the ritual.

What I mean is it would be impossible to make a story around the Old God Baby in a game as is, because it needs a big investment to flush it out, and it cant get that if it is only a maybe. 

[Dave of Canada]

Asunder did have canon, though. Wynne was alive and Shale was with them, meaning they have some events canon--least for literary purposes. Alistair being a drunkard / warden or dead doesn't work well with the story they're trying to tell, thus they forced him to be King for the story-line.

Perhaps imports with different choices will alter some of the events, such as Morrigan's sister being alive if Ali was killed or made into a drunk or Evangeline died because Wynne couldn't save her.

[The Night Haunter]

Dave of Canada wrote...

Asunder did have canon, though. Wynne was alive and Shale was with them, meaning they have some events canon--least for literary purposes. Alistair being a drunkard / warden or dead doesn't work well with the story they're trying to tell, thus they forced him to be King for the story-line.

Perhaps imports with different choices will alter some of the events, such as Morrigan's sister being alive if Ali was killed or made into a drunk or Evangeline died because Wynne couldn't save her.

Hmm.... I see what your saying. So if alistair wasnt king maybe something different happend in The Silent Grove? If so that would be acceptable, but I cant help thinking there is a better way to do this, since it makes it hard to tell what is actually happening in each universe of DA.

But hopefully sooner or later we will get some clarification from Mr. Gaider or someone else, so we know how exactly these stories fit into our DA Universe.

[Melca36]

Its already been said thatthe comics ARE NOT CANON to the game and that you should consider it an alternate universe.

[Reznore57]

The way i see things , David Gaider wrote about events that sometimes moves the plot forward.
Like in Asunder , where the mages broke away from the chantry.
In the book , Wynne was there and played a major role ...basically her quest send a lot of event in motion.
If you killed Wynne , well the revolution did happen anyway except it was something or someoidy else involved in it...a random mage did a quest for the divine...

About the silent Grove , we'll see what's gonna happen .But a drunkard Alistair or a king Alistair can look for his father.
Sten , well , if you didn't save him , he probably get out of his cage by another mean.

Now about Leliana , my guess is , that just shows that it's complicated to handle player cannon , and where they want to take the story.
But well , its Bioware fault ...they are still in a learning process with import it seems.
And i guess when they were making DA0 , they didn't know if there was going to be another game...so they basically let the player have fun...Kill companions , kill npc, change some things deeply in polical matters etc...

[DKJaigen]

ghostmessiah202 wrote...

DKJaigen wrote...

You seem to confuse retcon with cannon. Retcon means lore is alterd. For example: grey wardens do not use a ritual in the future installments while it was clear that they did so in the past series. Cannon means that the hero of the first series has 4 choices to end the game. but future installments always assume that the hero chooses option 2.

And in my opinion BW made a bad mistake by giving the players to many choices which causes many players to throw colossal ****fits ,which you are doing now. Even the witcher  who is loudly acclaimed for it so called choices nut in the end you change very little. The story should never be compromised for the players so called choices.  So i really dont have a problem with all of this.

Well it is retcon in the sense that in our universe what we did was canon, but in future versions of our universe what was canon changed.

I agree that bioware may have made a mistake with the number of choices in Origins. Especially the Old God Baby, that seems to be a huge story and something they cant just say 'well Morrigan got her old god baby with a different warden' because she needed to be near the Archdemon when it was slain to have the soul pass to her baby. If they make the ritual canon I wouldnt be too unhappy with that, mostly cause i almost always took the ritual.

What I mean is it would be impossible to make a story around the Old God Baby in a game as is, because it needs a big investment to flush it out, and it cant get that if it is only a maybe. 

As i said, to many choices create huge problems. Its annoying but right now every piece of canon the BW sets in place needs to be accepted and establised as canon. I hate it but its simply not viable for BW to create 7 different stories for each choice you made in orgins. Take for example ME ashley williams and Kaidan Alenko. In ME 3 BW had to put a large amount of time and effort on character that most people will likely never use or see. Now the choices in Orgins have even more impact.

[Fiacre]

DKJaigen wrote...

You seem to confuse retcon with cannon. Retcon means lore is alterd. For example: grey wardens do not use a ritual in the future installments while it was clear that they did so in the past series. Cannon means that the hero of the first series has 4 choices to end the game. but future installments always assume that the hero chooses option 2.

And in my opinion BW made a bad mistake by giving the players to many choices which causes many players to throw colossal ****fits ,which you are doing now. Even the witcher  who is loudly acclaimed for it so called choices nut in the end you change very little. The story should never be compromised for the players so called choices.  So i really dont have a problem with all of this.

It's not a ****fit. I don't think they'll ignore our choices, and I agree that for the extra material like books and comics they do need their own canon, but beig against having that canon forced on the games in a game whose charm is for a big part its choices is not throwing a ****fit.

If they give us a way to give suitably detailed input in how the story happened in DAO/A/2 to avoid errors, I'm all for it. But if they force omething like Alistair being kking on us? I'd have to honestly consider if I even biy DA3. He's dead in nearly all my games and my canon is Anora married to my Warden. If Bioware lets me tell the story like this, they better make sure it's kept like this and not simply make Alistair king.

And I think the OGB can be done without retconning. It does, however, need more work and two somewhat different plots -- one with a warden that didn't do the DR and one where the OGB plays a role.

[CELL55]

TobiTobsen wrote...

Gaider needs a canon he can base his story on. He cannot write 20 stories just to cover every possible choice players could make. That's what it is. His book canon. Nothing else.

Your story is still like you wanted it to be. If your Alistair is a useless drunkard, he will be one in DA3. If there is no OGB in your story, then there won't be one in DA3 for you and so forth.

This. Also, it may be that the 'Broad Strokes' of the non-game media happens; significant events occur, but maybe not necessarily as they appear in the novels/comics. If Wynne was killed in your game, the mages still decided to pursue freedom from the Chantry. If Hawke romanced Isabella, then he's still at her side in the comics, and the fights are a LOT easier for the crew. If Alistair was drunk, then maybe he got his act together and went off to look for his dad. Or maybe someone else did. It doesn't really matter. What does matter? The mages split from the Chantry. Isabella went off adventuring. Yavana was killed. 

The major plot points in the novels/comics could still be occuring, regardless of your game choices. Not everything revolves around you, you know.

[brushyourteeth]

From what I understand, the events of the Silent Grove comics (and the ones that come afterward) aren't actually canon - they just represent David Gaider's preferred outcome. He allows himself to take his favorite choices and follow them to his favorite conclusions.

But it won't have any impact on our gameplay, therefore nothing about it is "canon." It won't strongarm us into any specific choices or outcomes. Maybe Isabela and Varric went adventuring in Antiva together, maybe they didn't - it still doesn't mean Alistair had to be involved, or involved in the way DG wrote it.

They do this in comic books all the time - there's a whole series of Spider Man comics devoted to "what if" scenarios where the writers explore how the world would change if his choices had been different. None of them actually change the canon story - they're just for fun and character exploration.

The events of the novels, however, do seem to be canon but still so far don't seem to change anything in-game yet, though Asunder will probably set the stage for DAIII.

Modifié par brushyourteeth, 19 août 2012 - 02:59 .

[Foolsfolly]

There will be a canon Dragon Age Origins and Dragon Age 2.

Get used to this. In fact you've been seeing a canon Dragon Age in novels for a while now. And it isn't a coincidence that the default Origins import is called 'The Hero of Fereldan' and that it made Alistair king and seems to gel with all the books and comics.

Let's look at Mass Effect for a moment. There's a series that started out with the idea that your choices would carry over for three games and to an epic conclusion. In the end all your moral interesting choices from ME1 and ME2 pretty much amounted to nothing. Everything kinda felt the same. In fact the biggest changes where simply "who is dead" which had characters missing in the game. Other than that all choices led to the same consequences.

Now why would they do something so evil? So terrible?

Time and money... and likely an aversion to complexity (look at the import glitches in DA2 for example).

It takes a lot of money to write, script, voice, and in some cases make whole missions based off of different choices. All this money for what basically comes down to something only a few people will ever see.

Look BioWare gets actual hard data on how many of us finish their games (a higher percentage people finished DA2 than did DA:O; higher percentage finished ME2 than ME1 or ME3) and they also know what we by-large pick when it comes to choices.

Now take those numbers into account. That's finished at least once. And most gamers do not finish a game twice. Those mutants among us with dozens of victories are really a minority of gamers. I have over 20 Commander Shepards, I've had to delete all play-throughs of Origins twice on the Xbox to make new characters. I'm a mutant of video gaming. Most people do not do this.

So using the data at hand and seeing that you're working on a budget it really benefits a minority to build in extensive choice-based consequences from previous games into their current games.

I feel some of the reasons why Dragon Age 2 lacked in comparison to the first game was that there weren't enough choices. I feel that was a preemptive strike against this problem by making no differing consequences and no big choice in DA2 it made it easier and cheaper for DA3 to import those choices.

It made a mediocre choice/consequence game within its own game.

I'd much rather have a game where my choices in-game are counted and reacted to... and then for another game have those choices over-ridden. Of course in a perfect world I'd love a series that took every choice and had vastly different consequences throughout the whole series.

But we live in a world of budgets. And I'd much rather have a stronger stand alone game than something that blew its budget on scenes I'd see once or twice.

...this is also why we'll likely not see a return of 7 or so different origins. I'd count ourselves lucky if we get two origins next time.

[Anvos]

Foolsfolly wrote...

\\Look BioWare gets actual hard data on how many of us finish their games (a higher percentage people finished DA2 than did DA:O; higher percentage finished ME2 than ME1 or ME3) and they also know what we by-large pick when it comes to choices.

Actually the percentages for at least DA are misleading as in another thread somebody pointed out that though the percentage was higher the actual numbers of said poll said more people completed DAO than DA2.  Not to mention I think its only normally that (as an rpg) when it hasn't been that long since the original was released for somebody to try the start of a series to judge if they want to play it.

Also any good rpg is made to be played more than once.  DA was made to play at least 2-3 times and DA 2 was made to play at least twice. Playing 5+ times might not be normal but 2 or 3 times is very acceptable  for an RPG.

As for the thread topic, the way I've heard it is that the comic is to be viewed as a glimpse into one possible outcome of the events of DA and DA2 and doesn't force Alister as king or certain other things as cannon for DA3. 

Modifié par Anvos, 19 août 2012 - 08:01 .

[nightscrawl]

ghostmessiah202 wrote...

Maybe, but his books (including Asunder a recent one)...

You know that The Stolen Throne and The Calling both take place before Dragon Age: Origins, right? So there was nothing in those books to be "retconned".

Asunder and The Silent Grove (and upcoming Those Who Seek) are the first materials to take place after our game saves.

And honestly, I don't see why people care. As long as the imports or plots and whatever else in the actual next game you play reflect the choices you made, what does it matter if he chose to do one thing based on a specific DAO outcome?

Someone, somewhere, who did some aspect of play that is not reflected in the books or comic is going to be upset. They can't make everyone happy. The best thing to do is try and be entertained by more Dragon Age material, and use it as a semi-diversion while waiting for the next game. That's all it is. It's not gospel lore or anything.

At PAX East Mike Laidlaw did mention that they're working on fixing the import "weirdness" as he termed it. I'd say that's a good indication that we will have some form of import of at least some of our decisions. I find it hard to believe that, if you made Anora queen in DAO, they are just going to retcon that major decision (frankly, one of the most important choices in the entire game, far outweighing a companion's death that happens only under specific circumstances) and have Alistair default to being the king. And until we have proof, most likely by playing the next game ourselves, we won't know for a very long time whether that is the case.


However, I do agree that Leliana was a retcon yes. But it's not the same thing comparing a non-dynamic media (comic, novel) with a dynamic one (the game) that can change based on our choices.

Foolsfolly wrote...

I feel some of the reasons why Dragon Age 2 lacked in comparison to the first game was that there weren't enough choices. I feel that was a preemptive strike against this problem by making no differing consequences and no big choice in DA2 it made it easier and cheaper for DA3 to import those choices.

It made a mediocre choice/consequence game within its own game.

I'd much rather have a game where my choices in-game are counted and reacted to... and then for another game have those choices over-ridden. Of course in a perfect world I'd love a series that took every choice and had vastly different consequences throughout the whole series.

But we live in a world of budgets. And I'd much rather have a stronger stand alone game than something that blew its budget on scenes I'd see once or twice.

Agree.

Modifié par nightscrawl, 19 août 2012 - 08:19 .

[DKJaigen]

Fiacre wrote...

DKJaigen wrote...

You seem to confuse retcon with cannon. Retcon means lore is alterd. For example: grey wardens do not use a ritual in the future installments while it was clear that they did so in the past series. Cannon means that the hero of the first series has 4 choices to end the game. but future installments always assume that the hero chooses option 2.

And in my opinion BW made a bad mistake by giving the players to many choices which causes many players to throw colossal ****fits ,which you are doing now. Even the witcher  who is loudly acclaimed for it so called choices nut in the end you change very little. The story should never be compromised for the players so called choices.  So i really dont have a problem with all of this.

It's not a ****fit. I don't think they'll ignore our choices, and I agree that for the extra material like books and comics they do need their own canon, but beig against having that canon forced on the games in a game whose charm is for a big part its choices is not throwing a ****fit.

If they give us a way to give suitably detailed input in how the story happened in DAO/A/2 to avoid errors, I'm all for it. But if they force omething like Alistair being kking on us? I'd have to honestly consider if I even biy DA3. He's dead in nearly all my games and my canon is Anora married to my Warden. If Bioware lets me tell the story like this, they better make sure it's kept like this and not simply make Alistair king.

And I think the OGB can be done without retconning. It does, however, need more work and two somewhat different plots -- one with a warden that didn't do the DR and one where the OGB plays a role.

To bad mate alistair is now king whatever you like it or not. As i said we had to many choices. And in my opinion you really should not have the choice to become a king and to marry Anora.

[Fiacre]

And you know that for sure, yes? I'm pretty sure he isn't yet. If he indeed is when DA3 comes out... I'll just have to live with not playing it rather than put up with him getting on my nerves again.

I'm an optimist, though, so until Bioware tells us they intend to screw us over, I'll believe they don't. And it's not even that difficult to have the same outcome. The Warden disappears for some reason, bad stuff happens, neither Alistair nor Anora can change things that much. It's not perfect, but it's preferable to putting up with Alistair and having my Warden ruined.

[erilben]

ghostmessiah202 wrote...

When you combine this with Mr. Laidlaw saying they wanted an 'error-proof' way of importing choices kind of makes me think they want to restart with a Canon DA3 and then let our choices matter from that point forward.

It just means they want to fix the errors that occured with the importing. That's all. Look

[jackofalltrades456]

I wouldn't hold on to your old saves for Dragon age 3. It's understandable on why people are so paranoid about all these comics and books from David Gaider. He's been retconing and waving off player choices ever since he said the epilogue slides were only "rumors" during Awakening. Then Dragon Age 2 came out with dead characters coming back to life and one sided choices. This has been happening for awhile now and it's hard to tell if this will get any better or worse.

[1483749283]

Choice should be about small things, not big things. Big choices force the writers to either have to retcon OR to have to write an unmanageable number of major branches of the story, therefore detracting from the quality of the writing.

In particular, some Big Choices like the deaths of Wrex or Leliana were too one-sided to really receive narrative payoff. Most people kept those two in their parties.

I think the most effectively managed Big Choice by Bioware was the Geth/Quarian subplot. An interesting story that runs parallel to the main story, and so doesn't get in its way.

Small choices are great. I actually liked the BG2 style of "be good, get good reputation but less loot; be bad, get bad reputation but more loot." It works. It lets you build an image of who your character is while not affecting the main plotline.

Finally, KotOR did it well too; two different endings, and small choices, not big choices lead you to one or the other. The only problem with this is that if your character doesn't consistently side with one end of the moral spectrum, you wind up with a bland playthrough experience (also relevant for ME1 and ME2 paragon/renegade system).

[EricHVela]

I still think that importing game choices is a bad idea. I keep mentioning that some game series in the past (and even recents ones) had no problem with just starting with a particular canon despite however the previous game ended. It didn't stop people from replaying the games before the next one in the series and didn't stop them from replaying the games even after.

However, importing games obliges players to play the previous ones whereas those other series had no such incentives. (I skipped two Ultima games [1 and 4] and two Wing Commander expansions (from 1 and 2) despite their inclusion in the lore of later games.)

We'll likely continue to see this "import your game choices" gimmick due to the $$$ (but I have no desire to play the first The Witcher despite the gimmick).

... and it just a gimmick. The choices make little more than cameo appearances. Their importance in later games is trivialized.

[Melca36]

How many times does it have to be freaking said? David Gaider has stated the comics are NOT CANON to the games!!!!!!! Geez!

[Lintanis]

Melca36 wrote...

How many times does it have to be freaking said? David Gaider has stated the comics are NOT CANON to the games!!!!!!! Geez!

Some people just gotta herp derp over things 

[Foolsfolly]

ReggarBlane wrote...

I still think that importing game choices is a bad idea. I keep mentioning that some game series in the past (and even recents ones) had no problem with just starting with a particular canon despite however the previous game ended. It didn't stop people from replaying the games before the next one in the series and didn't stop them from replaying the games even after.

However, importing games obliges players to play the previous ones whereas those other series had no such incentives. (I skipped two Ultima games [1 and 4] and two Wing Commander expansions (from 1 and 2) despite their inclusion in the lore of later games.)

We'll likely continue to see this "import your game choices" gimmick due to the $$$ (but I have no desire to play the first The Witcher despite the gimmick).

... and it just a gimmick. The choices make little more than cameo appearances. Their importance in later games is trivialized.

I mostly agree with this. Keeping with a BioWare example knowing Revan in KOTOR was a saint in canon doesn't stop me from enjoying or ruin the experiences I had with a dark side Revan.

Melca36 wrote...

How many times does it have to be
freaking said? David Gaider has stated the comics are NOT CANON to the
games!!!!!!! Geez!

To your imports. There is a BioWare canon.